Sprint finished
Ah, July 1st. The calm before the storm. PES2010, please be great.
I’m trying to keep my mind off the future and just enjoy the present. I have unfinished business in many directions. Not least with FIFA09.
I’ve had the chance to play a good bit of FIFA09 over the past few days. I haven’t been entirely fair to this game over the course of the year. Regular readers are most likely to be fellow PES fans of old, and will know just how deeply tattooed on our gaming DNA is the anti-FIFA bias. It’s constitutionally hard to like FIFA, even when FIFA is great, as it currently is. Find a fault in FIFA, no matter how minor, and suddenly everybody’s all “see! see! look, I told you. Same old FIFA…”
After a few sessions on PES2008(PSP), it was hard to get back into FIFA09. Previously I’d been having a great time on FIFA09, scoring enjoyable goals, starting to get immersed in the Manager Mode career. What had happened to me?
I’d been playing PES, of course. And what is one of the most glaring differences between the two games? Why, it’s the sprint button, of course.
I adopted a tip I picked up a long time ago on the official EA FIFA forums. Play FIFA without ever touching the sprint button. At least to begin with. Just to acclimatise. The sprint button in FIFA is not designed to be used to the extent that PES refugees use it.
So I decided, for at least one match in my Manager Mode, to not use sprint at all. Not even in defence, which would be particularly tough given FIFA09’s unfortunate semi-exploit where simply squeezing secondary tackle+sprint easily wins back the ball far too often. The match got underway…
What a peculiar thing. When I had the ball, my finger wanted to hold sprint almost all the time. And when I didn’t have the ball, I wanted to hold sprint all the time. It wasn’t until I deliberately, consciously tried not holding sprint that I realised the extent of sprint abuse.
Laying off sprint encouraged a disturbingly realistic game of football. I built up from the back, stroking the ball around for a lot longer than I usually would. I went sideways and backwards frequently. I had a mesmerising few matches just passing the ball around and building chances. I won one of these matches 4-2, against Tottenham in the league. It was one of the most satisfying matches I’ve ever played on next-gen FIFA. It really was like participating, somehow, in a real football match.
Giving up sprint doesn’t limit you as much as you’d think. You can still use the right stick to make your player dart away from a marker. It’s true what the FIFA cultists say. You don’t really need to use sprint much, if at all, to play a football game. And you don’t necessarily need PES to have a good overall game of football on a console. Why am I still learning this after two years?
I really do hope PES2010 delivers. I had a few games of FIFA09 last night and I’m just not finding it addictive enough, certainly not in the same way PES of old had me glued to my console for hours on end.
I’m not even going to trust game play videos this time, the PES09 videos which looked great and full of promise, that is until the controller was in my hands and played the game. I shall deceide to buy the game solely on the demo and the way the game plays.
Fingers crossed PES2010 delivers.
Neil—I think that’s the wisest course. Wait for the demo, wait to get the feel of the game in your own hands. It’ll probably be the decisive moment for me too. Having said that, I’m still looking forward to all the commentary we’ve got coming over the next few weeks and months. Let the rampant speculation, paranoia, and back-biting commence!
FIFA09 is strangely empty at times, isn’t it? After my wholly positive session outlined in the post above I had a session this morning that felt more than a little flat. I’m sure FIFA10 will address some of that, and as this post does say, FIFA has its moments of greatness, undeniably. But I need Pro Evolution Soccer. After 10+ years I feel entitled to PES, dammit!
It’s funny what playing a game for 10+ years does to you isn’t it, there’s a kind of allegiance to the game, it’s a bit like supporting a football team, you want them to do well.
I can remember the first time a played PES, it was ISS PRO 98, the instance I played it, it felt just right. It was certainly better the Virtua Soccer at the time.
I’m looking forward to the 9th also, it should pass a day at work more quickly anyway.
Neil—I’m not really comfortable with the whole game-as-football-club stance. It gives Konami a free pass that they don’t deserve. A more accurate parallel would be a movie or TV series (The Matrix, Heroes, take your pick) that’s fallen on hard times and become either rubbish (PES2008) or average (PES2009). There’s no obligation to keep consuming further instalments. I stopped watching Heroes midway through season 2. I watched all three Matrix films, but hated the second and third. Neither of those franchises were like my football club to me. Neither is PES, despite there being many thousands of hours more invested in it. This is why I’m so tense this year—it’ll either be the end or a glorious new beginning.
Re. the 9th, it could actually be a few days earlier. PSM3 subscribers will receive their copies through the post, and usually do so a few days early.
Well, having been underwhelmed by FIFA10’s released gameplay footage, it looks like the 9th could be the beginning of something great for Konami…
Yes, I 100% agree with the “loyalty” issue. A game is not like a football club, or a family member. You play it because it’s the best, and you enthusiastically promote it among your friends because you want them to have a taste of ‘the best’. PES shouldn’t be a game that needs sympathy cheers. It should deserve its praise, the way it always did on old-gen.
Good comments guys, it is like a TV series-gone-bad that you still check out in the hope that it got good again. (Must admit though that I won’t bother with Heroes – truly awful after the 1st series).
Though it does hold more weight than that. I always praised it to anyone that played FIFA. Now I feel that PES has let me down in ways that no tv show ever could.
I remember a few years ago I bumped in to a guy I played football with. He was en route to Gamestation to… return PES5. I asked him “What the hell are you doing?” He said he preferred FIFA. He is a United fan like myself and in the same conversation he said that Fergie should be sacked. Needless to say I never spoke to him again.
TareX—the official trailer reminded me of the generic ones they used to do for the old-style FIFAs circa 2002! Not very good really, and it wasn’t gameplay, just snippets from gameplay. I want to see passing moves. If I was one of those Twitter types I’d have a bad mood on right now.
I was more taken with the alleged leaked footage showing extended gameplay. The 360-degree dribbling looked amazingly realistic. How will it affect gameplay though? Make it too easy? Time will tell.
Grilled Seabass—PES5?! I remember some people really disliking that one, but that reaction was the same every year. When I got on the Internet at home and started following the community reactions to the various instalments of PES, I was aware that some people loathed each new game. PES4, PES5, even the fan-favourite PES6 had its critics. But those people were always in teh strict minority and usually kept quiet after having their say, and carried on playing the previous year’s game. Weren’t they the days?
I agree, the FIFA10 video does seem a little generic, i wouldn’t expect a massive improvement to graphic over the next few installments of the games, just improvements to game modes and game play.
It will be interesting to how the 360 movement effects game play, this extra level of freedom will surely have to be countered with tougher AI midfielders, defenders and goalies. And will it make PES10 feel cumbersome?
Well, I searched for leaked footage of FIFA10 and that’s what I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sv0zrgsW7U&fmt=18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvaRiyq4gz8&fmt=18
Running looked nice, but it also looked 8-directional to me… Nothing like Football Kingdom’s 360 movement and passing if you’ve seen it’s videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dcvciKaoPA
The crowd’s reaction to Ronaldo’s goal was neat though….
Makershaker—The FIFA trailer has me worried. As of right now I’m fully prepared to spend 2010 playing Tetris…
There’s currently a rumour about PES2010 having 360-degree dribbling as well. Not much substance to the rumour, IMO, but it hasn’t been specifically denied by those who’ve had their hands on the game. I think though that the NDAs would also prevent them commenting about things that aren’t in the game.
TareX—thanks for the links, very intriguing. I couldn’t make up my mind about the running. At times it looked 360-ish, at others 8-way. And if this is FIFA10, the rest of the gameplay seems identical, right down to the routine through-ball into the strikers.
I’m sure there was an earlier version of Fifa (05,06?) which had multi-directional (>8 way) movement, at least on the PC version, although it made player control feel rather slippery and unsatisfying
abbeyhill—I’m not familiar with FIFAs from around FIFA97 to FIFA06, but I used to play the demos every year (on the old OPS2 Magazine demo disc—how quaint!). And I’m sure I remember FIFA2003 as having a >8-way directional movement thing as well. But that was only one game in a demo and it was 6 years ago, so I’m not sure.